The early years of a child's life form the foundation for future health, development, learning and wellbeing. The AIHW has developed a set of national outcome measures for early childhood development. This is in response to policy initiatives of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG).
National outcome measures for early childhood development
In July 2009, COAG released Investing in the Early Years - A National Early Childhood Development Strategy (PDF, 478KB), with the vision that ‘by 2020 all children have the best start in life to create a better future for themselves and for the nation’.
One of the key reform priorities in the strategy is to build better information and a solid evidence base. Establishing national outcome measures for early childhood development is one of the key projects to progress this.
Developing an indicator-based reporting framework for early childhood development will enable monitoring of achievements against the Early Childhood Development (ECD) Outcomes Framework to inform COAG of progress towards their vision.
National outcome measures for early childhood development outlines the process of developing an indicator-based reporting framework for early childhood development, and establishes a recommended high-level set of indicators to measure progress against the outcomes framework in the strategy.